7/09/2013

It's Tuesday, and time for another round of "Would You Rather," the game that asks you to make the tough choices. In last week's question "live with the Addams Family or the Munsters," the Munsters won with 58% of the vote. I guess the Addams Family was a little too spooky and ooky. This week, it's about time travel.

The Scenario
You volunteer to be a test subject for a new procedure: time travel. As you climb into the chair, the scientists explain that they can send you through time, one million years into the future or the past. The scientists also add that it could be a one-way trip. They know they can get you there, but aren't sure if it will work in reverse. Which one would you choose?

The Ground Rules

You can only bring yourself. No tools or extra food. Or clothes.

You can only go to exactly one million years in the future or the past, right down to the second. You can't stop at any point in between.

You'll be staying in your chosen time period for twenty-four hours.

There's a fifty percent chance that you might never come back to the present. If they do manage to bring you back, it will be twenty-four hours after you left.

If you die, they can still bring back your dead body.

One million years in the past would put you in the early Cenozoic-Pleistocene era. It's a time of glaciers and early humans. Sorry, no dinosaurs or Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.

One million years in the future is completely unknown...for obvious reasons.

6
comments:

Briane Pagel
said...

I'm the only voter so far! So I WIN. I assume the scientists will come to my house to set up the machine.

Here's the thing: why would I want to go back to the late ice age or whatever? The people then were animals, practically, and the animals then all had sabre teeth (Note: i didn't pay much attention in science but I DID watch a lot of "Flintstones.") Plus I'd be camping and have to hunt for food, and neither of those are my strong suit. Plus, in all seriousness, I have a pretty good idea what it would be like in that time. It would be like when I went hiking in the Redwoods, only with mammoths and cave (?) men.

On the other hand, I assume in 1,000,000 AD, that the science would be amazing and I could enjoy a trip that would, I assume, blow my mind. In 1,000,000 years we went from skulking around the woods to having Internet polls on whether we would like to skulk around the woods or go to the future, and the progress is improving exponentially. (Logarithmically? Are they the same thing?)(I think they are.) So 1,000,000 years from now, the world is going to be 1,000,000,000,000etcetc times as great as it is now. Like, they will have 7D movies and teleportation and we'll have colonized the stars and probably other animals will have evolved so we'll finally know what they are thinking. (My guess? "They just make these movies in 7D to justify a higher ticket price.")

In the end it all comes down to this, though: I want to be there to see Brett Favre-A-Tron make a triumphant comeback and win the Super Bowl MMMMMMMMMMMCMMMMXLMMCI.

A little late to this poll, but I would chose B.C. I think the sun is supposed to envelope the earth at some point around a million years in the future. Or perhaps it's a billion years? Idk. At least in the past I know what I'd be getting. No antibiotics, no hospitals, no aspirin, but I could definitely do some study on exactly where to go and what to look for. With A.D. there are too many unknowns.